RUSH: You know, my instincts oftentimes, my friends, are infallible. Yesterday, talking about the Trump stimulus plan I told a caller, “It’s not gonna be like you’re used to… It’s gonna be a mixture of federal, state, local and private money.” “Private money? What do you mean, private money?” “Trump’s gonna get investors.” Well, lo and behold, the Washington Post has a quasi-story on this, once again documenting that I, El Rushbo, am highly tuned.
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RUSH: We had a couple calls yesterday, the day before, and I’ve alluded to it myself without the calls that Trump’s big, big, big deal is the stimulus. And it is. This infrastructure bill is something he’s really serious about, folks. Listen to him, he brings it up every rally that he’s had. He’s embarrassed of our airports.
I mean, it’s rusted out, looks like it’s in really, really bad shape. And there’s all kinds of examples of this all over the country. Trump wants it fixed. He’s talking about a trillion-dollar stimulus bill, and that immediately generates red flags because the last time we heard a stimulus bill talked about and passed it was Obama’s. It was touted as $787 billion but by the time it was all finished it was near a trillion dollars.
And of course no bridges were rebuilt, and no roads were repaired, other than those that were already in the in the pipeline to be, and there certainly wasn’t any additional modernization of airports. In other words, nothing that wasn’t already in the pipeline from previous budgets for upgrade or repair was added to it.
Obama’s stimulus was pure political. It went to donors, who then formed companies like Solyndra. Obama paid back donors with his stimulus. He funded industries that he wanted to advance at the expense of fossil fuels and he made sure that union workers, as many as possible, did not lose their jobs. If you look at the allocation of Obama’s stimulus, you’ll find a shocking percentage of it went to union employees, including teachers.
But it didn’t rebuild any roads, not any new roads, new bridges, or airports. Trump was serious about actually doing it, but a trillion dollars we don’t have. We do not have a trillion dollars. We didn’t have Obama’s $787 billion, and believe me, the people that elected Trump and the people that were four square behind Trump know full well we don’t have the money. And they believe Trump when he has said we don’t have the money.
We’re $20 trillion in debt, 19, $20 trillion in debt. We don’t have any money. And the people that voted for Trump believe that the days of mass addition to the national debt are over. That’s one of the attractive aspects of Trump. Okay, so here’s Trump now talking about a trillion-dollar stimulus. And immediately there’s all kinds of people getting really worried about this, because this is right out of the Democrat Party playbook.
Government spending, federal spending on projects paying back donors, funding the unions, all of the, you know, political expenditures, busting the deficit, busting the national debt and nothing getting done. That’s the track record. And in fact here’s another reason why people are scared. Grab audio sound bite number four. This is Chuck-U Schumer yesterday on Powerhouse Politics, ABC News. It’s a podcast, Jonathan Karl talking to him about the infrastructure bill. He asks Schumer, “Do you think you’ll be working with Trump on this?”
SCHUMER: We think it should be large. He’s mentioned a trillion dollars. I told him that sounded good to me. But I told him that, you know, you couldn’t do the kind of infrastructure building we need in America with just tax breaks. I said to do this in the way that at least we wanted to do it, he’d need to alienate a good number of his right-wing Republicans, and he said he realized that. We’re not gonna oppose something simply ’cause it has the name “Trump” on it, but we will certainly not sacrifice our principles just to get something done.
So now you have some Never Trumpers, you have some conservatives who are on the on the verge — they’re probably writing the pieces right now, the See, I Told You So pieces. They can’t wait to go on Fox News and say, “I told you it was too good to be true. Trump’s just a New York City liberal. Here he is in bed with Schumer, and a trillion dollars sounds good to him, and Trump admits he’s gonna alienate right wingers.”
Trump’s not said that. Schumer is saying it. So what kind of stimulus is Trump thinking about? Well, we turn to the Washington Post, and it actually is pretty close to some things I’ve already heard. The Trump stimulus — and I’m gonna go out on a limb here, ’cause I really think Trump has different ideas of doing things like this. I think Trump tells the truth when he talks about our political leaders being stupid and doing things in dumb, stupid ways.
I think the people he’s chosen for his cabinet are expressly, purposely for projects like this, people who know where to find money, investment money, federal money, state money, where to find it and put it to use to actually improve things, build things, construct things.
I don’t think this is going to be your average, ordinary, run-of-the-mill political legislation with a giant authorization bill that is filled with new spending and tax breaks and incentives, the same way it’s always been done that nobody wants any more of, and it never results in actual progress. It never results in whatever the objective is actually happening.
Remember, part of Obama’s stimulus was, who was it, John Deere was all of a sudden saved not having to lay people off, or was it Caterpillar? It was Caterpillar, never gonna have to lay anybody off, and Caterpillar kept laying people off even after Obama’s stimulus. The Trump stimulus, he has assured everybody is gonna be revenue neutral. But when people hear that they smirk, too. Well, that’s what everybody says, revenue neutral, but it’s never. Obama told us that Obamacare was gonna revenue neutral, and nothing’s ever revenue neutral.
So built-in opposition to that claim. Trump’s stimulus is not in one year. He doesn’t want a trillion dollars next year. He wants it over ten years. So it’s $100 billion a year, and he does want to fund quietly of with tax incentives, the kind of which we don’t know yet. He also wants the states where these projects are to throw in some money, and he wants private money. And everybody’s saying, “Private money? How in the hell do you do that? (stammering) Why — why — why would anybody in the private sector throw money after a federal government project?”
“Well, be it would be an investment.”
“Well, how? What — what — what kind of investment? How would they make any money on it?”
“Well, have to wait and see.”
The Washington Post says, “The task force head [to manage his stimulus] is ‘not Cabinet level,’ this individual said, but would play a critical role in coordinating among federal, state and local officials as well as private investors as the new administration prepares to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into projects across the country.
“Trump has pledged to mobilize anywhere from half a trillion to a trillion dollars into upgrading the nation’s aging roads, bridges and transportation hubs,” i.e. airports and train stations. Airports the biggie. “But that plan might not rely on direct federal spending.” Hello! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying for past few days! It will not rely on direct federal spending.
“Venture capitalist Wilbur Ross,” who was in Trump’s cabinet, a rich guy, which is all anybody knows about him, “Trump’s nominee to run the Commerce Department, and University of California at Irvine business professor Peter Navarro have proposed an investment tax credit that they say would cost $137 billion and stimulate about $1 trillion of private investment. Ross and Navarro say the plan would be revenue-neutral…”
And of course, the rest of the Post story is, this is not possible. How in the world can you come up and turn $137 billion, no matter how you get it, into one trillion? That kind of return, that just doesn’t happen. And that’s the exact kind of thinking that has put us into the circumstances we’re in where nothing new ever gets done, takes years to get started. There hasn’t been any innovative thinking whatsoever.
We have the traditional ways to find the money in the budget: Create new money, print new money, whatever. Take it from here; take it from there. Nothing ever gets done. This is a revolutionary new way of thinking about it. Everybody’s pooh-poohing, like they pooh-poohed every aspect of Trump’s campaign because it was outside the box. It was outside the establishment. It didn’t make sense. No way it could work, just like, “No way Trump can win.”
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RUSH: Look, folks, I think banks are gonna have a lot more to do with whatever Trump’s doing here than the federal Treasury. I think that’s where this is all headed. But that’s… I’m getting way ahead of the game. Let me share something with you. CNN, an hour ago: “Trump transportation secretary Elaine Chao…” That’s the wife, by the way, of Mitch McConnell. “Trump Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao Hedges on Massive New Infrastructure Injection.”
Trump’s nominated Elaine Chao. It sounds to me like what Trump is doing, he’s got all these cabinet people. He’s nominated them and so forth. But when he’s really gonna go get something done, he’s gonna have a task force outside of the normal cabinet channels. Which wouldn’t he when his cabinet secretaries, appointees, are already saying they don’t like the way he’s going about this. They’re not personalizing it. I just… I still don’t think people grasp the newness here.
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RUSH: I’m searching for a way to explain this. Let me try this: Just five hours ago, AP had a story on Trump’s infrastructure bill: “Trump’s Commitment to Infrastructure Vow Is Being Questioned.” And from the article we glean the following: “It is not at all clear that President-Elect Trump’s plans to spend massively on infrastructure are going to be unfold as he promised. Lately, lobbyists have begun to fear that there won’t be an infrastructure proposal at all, or at least not the grand plan they’ve been led to expect.”
Here’s what he said about the Trump stimulus…
SCHUMER: We think it should be large. He’s mentioned a trillion dollars. I told him that sounded good to me. But I told him that, you know, you couldn’t do the kind of infrastructure building we need in America with just tax breaks. I said to do this in the way that at least we wanted to do it, he’d need to alienate a good number of his right-wing Republicans, and he said he realized that.
RUSH: Stop the tape.
SCHUMER: We’re not gonna —
RUSH: “I said to Donald Trump…” This is Chuck-U. “I said to Trump, ‘To do this in the way that we [Democrats] want to do it,” which is not a factor, by the way. The way the Democrats want to do it is not a factor. Anyway, Chuck Schumer says, “I said that Trump, the way we want to do it, he’d need to alienate a good number of his right-wing Republicans, and he said he realized that.” That does not mean that Trump agreed that the way Schumer wants to do it is the way it’s gonna be done and that alienating…
Of course Schumer wants to alienate Republicans, but Trump doesn’t. But this sound bite is designed to make it look like Schumer has already got an agreement with Trump to do it the way Schumer wants to do it, which would then alienate Republicans. Yet the AP’s out here saying that lobbyists can’t even find the plan. They don’t even think there’s gonna be a traditional infrastructure proposal, at least not the grand plan they had been led to expect. What Schumer means is, he’s only gonna help out if he can raise taxes.
But I don’t think… How can I explain this? There’s another… By the way, one of the piece of analysis to this that you need to be aware of, because the point I’m trying to make that everybody in Washington still cannot help themselves. They’re still plugging Trump into their system, and they haven’t figured out that their system is what was defeated. Trump is not going to try to plug himself into their system. He doesn’t like it, he thinks it’s dumb, he thinks it’s stupid.
And so they’re still plugging Trump into the system. So Trump’s deal won’t work because the pork barrel people will go in there and destroy it, or because the lobbyists are not gonna get what they want, or because Chuck Schumer isn’t gonna get what he wants. Meanwhile, they’re making the mistake of assuming that the way Trump is going to do this is the way it’s always been done, this isn’t gonna be the way Trump does it because that way never works! One of the reasons we’re in the mess we’re in is that the people in the establishment, the political class, keep screwing these kind of projects up.
And the hubris, if you will, or the conceit that makes all these people think that Trump is no different than any other president, “He’s gotta come up here and basically let us write the bill and he’s gotta go by and associate with us and make sure we incorporate what he wants.” The key to this is these lobbyists, in this AP story. I’m sure AP thinks this story is very, very damaging to Trump. What they don’t understand, is that this story really uncovers how Trump is gonna do this. Again: “It’s not at all clear that President-Elect Trump’s plan to spend massively on infrastructure are gonna unfold as he promised.
“Lately lobbyists have begun to fear that there won’t be an infrastructure proposal at all, or at least not the grand plan they’ve been led to expect.” To me, understanding Trump, understanding his campaign, taking a look at how Trump as succeeded in business — and the people he’s done it with and the people he’s put in his cabinet — the exact point is that there may not be a massive infrastructure proposal at all. Maybe there isn’t gonna be some grand plan that can be carpet bombed, cherry-picked, and nuked.
Maybe Trump is just gonna get his cabinet guys like Wilbur Ross and some of these other brilliant, successful people to go out and make this happen. Meanwhile, all these guys in Washington only know one way, and that’s their way, with legislation and the federal Treasury and the itinerant pork barrel projects, “That you have to have because that’s just the way we do things here, Mr. Limbaugh, and we gotta have the earmarks and we gotta have the pork barrel projects, and I just don’t see how Trump can succeed.”
And they’ve been saying that since July 16th of 2015.
Well, apparently it is hard to figure out, or at least maybe it’s hard to admit or accept. (interruption) Mmm-hmm. (interruption) Uh, it’s… Mr. Snerdley just said, “You know, it’s very hard to figure out, it’s very difficult to understand how you could spend that much money without going through Congress.” Hmm. Well, some of it will go through Congress, obviously. There’s gonna be some of it that’s gonna be federal money, but it’s not all gonna be federal money. This is what everybody’s missing. (chuckles) I’m just… Look, folks, I’m not wired. I don’t know anything, meaning I haven’t got any inside information.
I just pay attention. I pay attention to who people are and what they say. And some people I believe it when they say it and some people I don’t. Trump I happen to believe what he says about when he’s talking about successes in business and succeeding. I know how he’s done it. It’s not always been ways that many people would approve of, but it won’t be long to find this out, but he’s been leaving people in the dust since this whole thing began.
And I think intelligence guided by experience: Why now are we gonna all of a sudden start plugging Trump into the system that he just snookered and blew to smithereens and has criticized as ineffective and wasteful and never gets anything done? Why would he plug himself into that? Why would he set himself up for failure? I just don’t think he does that.
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RUSH: Greg in Cleveland, great to have you with us, sir. How are you?
CALLER: Rush, thank you so much for taking my call. Merry Christmas to you.
RUSH: Right back at you. Appreciate your call, sir.
CALLER: Well, thank you so much. I want to make a quick point, but I want to mention what I like so much about your show and that is your objectivity. For someone who backs one party to heavily, when you give your reports, it’s objective, and that’s exactly what you don’t get from the mainstream media, so I appreciate that about you.
RUSH: I appreciate that, sir. You’re very shrewd. I thank you.
CALLER: Ha-ha. Well, good. I’ll make a quick point. In my opinion, the biggest obstacle that our country faces is congressional gridlock. I’m not hopeless at all. I feel very hopeful that this president-elect, by his personality, he seems to be such a doer and just a nonpolitician. I think that that’s the type person that it would take to break up the gridlock.
RUSH: I know what you mean when you talk about Trump being an outsider and not a prisoner to the systems that entrap everybody. But I have to tell you about gridlock. I happen to love it. I think gridlock is the greatest invention the Founding Fathers gave us. The less Washington does, the better. The fewer laws we make, the more freedom we have. The more they’re busy doing things, the more money they waste, the more freedom we lose, the more regulations we face.
But Trump coming in, I’ve got this story from The Politico that I’ve been thinking about delving into today, but there’s not enough time. You try to be here tomorrow, Greg, because this story, “Trump Posse Browbeats Hill Republicans,” this is all about how people on Capitol Hill are bracing themselves for Trump and the things they’re leaking already to the media about the Trump team.
It’s in The Politico, which means and could be fake news. But it’s a fascinating piece. Not enough time to deal with it now. But it’s right up the ally you’re talking about here. I know what you’re saying. You’re thinking an outsider like Trump can come in and run rings around people that don’t know what he’s doing to actually get things done, and that’s what you mean by defeating gridlock. In that sense, I agree with you.
CALLER: Right, to get things done.
RUSH: To get things done that need to get done, yeah. Now, what kind of iPhone do you want, 7 or 7 Plus?
CALLER: The regular 7.
RUSH: Cool! Okay. And your carrier?
CALLER: It’s Consumer Cellular.
RUSH: All right. Consumer Cellular. So do you happen to know if it’s a CDMA network or GSM, did that make any sense to you?
CALLER: Actually I don’t know that offhand.
RUSH: Do you know if it’s related to T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T?
CALLER: I’m pretty sure it’s connected to AT&T.
RUSH: Here’s what I’m gonna do.
CALLER: Thank you.
CALLER: Very good.
RUSH: What color do you want?
CALLER: That’s very generous of you. Thank you so much.
RUSH: You’re more than welcome.
CALLER: Do you have it in matte black?
RUSH: I do.
CALLER: That would be super.
RUSH: Absolutely do. Write it down in there, iPhone 7, matte black, unlocked, SIM-free. It is an AT&T network. So I’ve got you covered either way. I’ll send you the unlocked SIM-free and that way you can take it to them and have it set up as a virgin phone and it will work. After that it’ll work on any network you want if you ever want to change. That’s the beauty of the SIM-free unlocked phone.
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